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I declare that the Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of
evolutionary agents
sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a
young race of laughing
freemen." ---Timothy Leary
The Fab Four
Here is a little info on those mop tops in the photo above.
John (says hello)
I don't intend to be a
performing flea any more. I was a dreamweaver, but although I'll be around
I don't intend to be running at 20,000 miles an hour trying to prove myself.
I don't want to die at 40.
|
Paul (says hello)
It's hard to follow my own act.
But the only answer to that would be to give up after the Beatles. I only
had two alternatives. Give up or carry on.
|
George (says hello)
I think people who truly
can live a life in music are telling the world, "You can have my love, you
can have my smiles. Forget the bad parts, you don't need them. Just take
the music, the goodness, because it's the very best, and it's the part I
give most willingly."
|
Ringo (says hello)
I've never really done
anything to create what has happened. It creates itself. I'm here because
it happened. But I didn't do anything to make it happen apart from saying
"Yes."
|
Current Beatles Happenings
H&S Media have
published a Beatles Tribute magazine coinciding with Anthology. It
contains many, many pictures -- as a matter of fact, it is mostly photos
with just a bit of text summarizing the Beatles' history. The text
doesn't say anything that longtime Beatles fans don't already know,
but for a new
fan it might be handy to have a short but wide ranging overview.
For the long time fan, though, decide to buy based on the
photos alone. The magazine, by the way, is printed on nicer paper than
normally found at newstands.
|
|
The Dubious Origins of the Beatles and some ABCs
On rec.music.beatles, Kevin McGuire
brought to our attention John's whimsical "history"
of the Beatles. But in addition to this MerseyBeat piece by John,
the Beatles had fun submitting other classified ads to the same
publication. Frederic Beghin was nice enough to enter the text for our further
enjoyment. He says, "'Merseybeat : the beginnings of the Beatles' is a
book by Bill Harry (editor of MerseyBeat) published in 1977 (Omnibus Press)
and containing facsimiles of every page The Beatles ever contributed to."
And here they are.
And while we're enjoying John's uniqe style of
writing, in 1970 a suite of John Lennon's lithographs were displayed at The
Lee Nordness Galleries in New York City. Among the fourteen shown was one,
the first I believe, which was a handwritten list of the "ABC"s. Some of
the writing is a little hard for me to make out, but I've done my best to
copy into typewritten form John Lennon's ABCs.
Beatles Information Requests
he asks.
Andy Goldberg has a
Polish poster that's shown to the right (click on it to see a much bigger
version). His problem was that he didn't know anything about it. Spotting
it here, a Beatles fan in Prague
offers a translation,
while another fan from Poland gives
some background on the poster and what Beatlemania was like in
Poland in the 60's.
Here are still more stories about
Beatlemania behind the Iron Curtain.
Beatles Stories
(Picture courtesy of Philippe Berube.)
Every Beatle fan's dream would be to meet one or more of the Beatles.
Since the ratio of Beatles to everyone else is about, oh, 4 to 5,000,000,000,
chances are kind of slim of happening across them. But Gregory Neu's
mom and dad were lucky enough to do just that a while back.
This is how Greg describes their meeting with
John and Yoko.
Randy Klauk had a more recent encounter
with Paul in 1994. You're guaranteed to get nervous just reading it!
And a year earlier than that, Clayton Eames also managed to get
within earshot of Paul. Next time
Paul's ears are ringing, he might be remembering Clayton...
During the Help! Tour, Peter Whitelaw came thaaaaaat close to
meeting the Beatles. You can't help but
wonder, "What if..."
And here's yet another close call.
This time, though, it would have been Ringo.
We haven't been lucky enough to meet the Beatles, but in 1992 my wife
and I each individually entered a Disney Beatles contest. First prize
was a set of Beatles discs. We didn't win that either but Alice did win
one of the lesser prizes: an approximately
5" x 7" Beatles print.
[Do you have a story of your own? Send it this way!]
Paul is Dead??
Everyone's heard about all the Paul is dead rumors. Well, could it be that
all those clues were misinterpreted? ...That actually Paul is the only
one who survived? ...Hmm, let's check and see.
Chris Fishel is the first-rate detective
who put the pieces together and posted them to
rec.music.beatles.
And recently, more clues have been
uncovered.
I'm beginning to suspect all the governments of the world are behind this.
You doubt that there's an evil plot at hand?? Ha. Well, just
read this. And in the Czech Republic,
still more clues have been unearthed.
Who knows how many other clues are out there waiting to be found. There
might even be a UFO connection... You never know.
Just when you thought the clues had slowed to a trickle, well golly
gee willickers, would ya look at this!
(I hope I don't really need to say this, but add lots of :-) faces.)
It seems my little comment in parentheses above has gone unnoticed.
And so, yes, I'm sorry to say that there are
doubters in our midst...
Iê-Iê-Iê
Here is a little historical tidbit from Brazil
about what effect the Beatles have had on rock'n'roll there.
MIDI Files
Someone, whose name I have yet learn,
has offered his collection of Beatles MIDI files to
fans on the net. You can grab all of them in a
PKZIPped file, a
QuickTime audio file (provided by
Richard Shapiro), or
sample each individually. Oh, and be sure you use
an appropriate MIDI mapper for playback. You can get very strange sounding
results otherwise - as I've already found out. Enjoy!
Olinto Neto made a MIDI
file of Free as a Bird which is not
included in the PKZIP or SIT files above. [I haven't
been able to get email to him. If you're reading this, Olinto, thank
you.]
Discography
With CDs it's such a pain to remove those little booklets
that I rarely read what originally were the album sleeve notes. It's
not as much fun as holding the album cover in your hands, but for the LPs
and EPs (there are no notes on singles) you can read the album sleeve notes
for the
highlighted titles. Titles not highlighted have no notes on the sleeve or
contain only lyrics; Pepper and White album, for instance. Lyrics are
available from
computer sites in the Beatles web pages and music sites listed below.
Off to Liverpool
While not focusing on the Beatles themselves, Jeremy White has put together
a mini tour of
Liverpool that you'll undoubtedly find enjoyable. Unless you happen to
be lucky enough to live nearby, this is a much cheaper way to visit---so no
complaining about slow image downloads! :-)
Beatles in Cyberspace
It seems with a little spare time and access to a computer, Beatles fans
have begun to spin webs containing all sorts of interesting things related
to the Fabs. The pointers collected below offer snippets of audio, images,
text, guitar chords, and---need I say it?---"much, much more." (Think I
could get a job in marketing?...)
Where to Buy Beatles Goodies
Ever wish you had a beach towel, mug, magnet, or whatever that shows off
your interest in things Beatle?
Here are a few companies I've come across
that sell those sorts of items.
Help Improve This Page
Please send me anything you think would be helpful to add (like European
or Asian Beatles info, your URL, better ways to organize this page, or
anything else you can think of).
Really! Nothing is more fun and better made than the result of a group
effort. If you've got Beatley things and no time or web server access,
tell me how you'd like them formatted, and send them this way.
Thanks!
Mike
Usage Stats...
Web browsing is an isolated kind of activity. Even though there are
hundreds of thousands of us out here browsing, technology forces us to be
completely on
our own---a high tech kind of tunnel vision. If you're curious who else
has been to this page in addition to you, here is
a little history of the page.
Mike
Markowski
Last modified: February 12, 1996